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Comment by mrlambchop | Hacker News Reader

I caught COVID-19 back in Aug from helping out the local schools with their bumpy start into remote learning.

6 weeks later, I am suffering from occasional severe fatigue still - these days, it manifests itself after 8-9 hours or so and results in a crash where I have to sleep for 40mins+. If I don’t struggle through and go to bed then, it will screw up my sleep schedule. During the 2 weeks of COVID, it was way worse and I could sleep 3/4s of an entire day and still be tired.

This is getting better - I push myself everyday just a little more and now can exercise for 2 hours straight and carry on, but it’s night and day different to pre-COVID behavior and I imagine it will be through to Christmas before I am back to “normal” (touch wood).

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I'm 6 months into my COVID illness, and I'm still having fatigue and breathing difficulties on a daily basis. It started with severe breathing difficulties, but I was never in the hospital, and it has basically been going up and down in waves since then. X-rays shows that my lungs have recovered, but I don't feel good at all. I'm 37 and in great shape. I am so damn tired of the discussion being focused on deaths: If 2-5% of infected get long-term symptoms like me, it's going to be an absolute onslaught on the health care systems in the coming years.

No idea if it's replicable, but I found that the only thing that ensured my sleep when I was at the stage you are at was to drink tea brewed on fresh oregano leaves (I have them in my garden), mixed with honey. It's something I'd never done before, but it put me to sleep in minutes and let me actually rest.

I've had a fever every day for over a month. At the beginning they were 101 and up, and my heart rate spiked over 100 for long periods of time (normally I'm in the 60's and 70's). Now the "fevers" are pretty low grade (under 100 but definitely higher than "normal.")

I'm also experiencing the crashes you mentioned - fine one minute and crawling back in bed the next. It's usually in the afternoons or evenings. But as you say, it's much better than before when I slept ALL DAY for several days.

To end on a brighter note, I am back to exercising 45 mins, 3 days a week. And I go biking weekends, for 1.5 - 2 hours. My stamina isn't what it was, but it's building back. I even decided to go ahead with a (virtual) race I signed up for. I'll walk/run with the only goal of finishing.

Thanks for sharing. I wish we reserved one post/comment for people only who has/had COVID019 to hear their experiences. I know there are many people in HN with the disease but their words are scattered around, hard to explore.

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